10/11/2007 @ 6:00PM

America's 200 Best Small Companies

Our 200 Best Small Companies in America must pass through a gauntlet to qualify for the list. We judged candidates–all with revenue of $5 million to $750 million and share prices above $5 as of Oct. 1–according to return on equity, as well as sustained sales and net profit growth over 12-month and five-year periods. Too much debt, signs of a downturn in the future or a whiff of legal troubles are all disqualifiers. We also exclude banks, utilities and REITs, since operational management has less of an impact on their results than market movements, industry regulation and requirements forcing them to pay out a majority of taxable income, respectively. More …

Due to a sorting error with our 200 Best Small Companies list, companies ranked 51 through 200 had incorrect data published in the print edition for the following columns: 5-year average return on equity %, 5-year average sales growth %, 5-year average EPS growth %, latest 12-month sales ($mil). The ROE, sales growth and EPS rankings for these companies were also incorrect. The errors did not impact the overall ranking for the list. The data on Forbes.com is correct. Click here to download the corrected table and index in Adobe format – The Editors